Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Henry Miyatake Interview III
Narrator: Henry Miyatake
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 21, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-mhenry-03-0009

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So, let's get into that. So you were drafted into the army.

HM: Well, activated --

TI: Activated, activated into the army.

HM: Yeah, and then I got -- we, we were put into Fort Lewis. And the group that I was in, there was about nineteen of us in that group. And all of us had some kind of telecommunication capability. All of us were radio amateurs (licensed by FCC). That was without question a standard for the nineteen of us. And we were being kept for some different kind of assignment. And this guy that I got to be friendly with, he was from Winslow and he was radio amateur, and we were comparing our QSL numbers. Anyway, when the, the orders came through for assignment, I was the only guy that didn't get an assignment. I thought to myself, what the heck's going on in this crazy place? And I had done some funny dealings and I had my Pontiac down, down in Fort Lewis. And I used to drive this guy and myself, we used to come back to Seattle on the weekend. And when everybody got their assignment, they had eighteen orders issued and I was the only guy that didn't get an order and I thought what the heck's going on in this place? And then they all, they got all assigned to the, the Nike base, Fort Bliss, Texas. You know (this is) a First Nike installation for anti-aircraft missiles. And I thought to myself this must be another one of these discrimination deals, I thought to myself. Man I must be, must have hit somebody the wrong way on this process. So, I get called in to, after all these guys leave, and here I'm the only guy in this whole place. And I thought to myself, what the heck they gonna do with me? So I'll -- the assignment officer calls me in, he was a warrant officer and he says, "Well, you know, they're holding you up for some reason. We don't know what it is, but they're holding you up. You're gonna get reassigned." So I says, "Well, since I'm not doing anything, can I take off?" And he says, "Yeah. You gotta be back here Monday morning though." So, this is a Thursday. So I took off and went to Seattle in my own car. So, I took off. So I went back to this guy on Monday and he, he says, "Nah, we haven't heard anything." And then the orders came through and he says, "Hey, you're assigned to infantry down in Fort Ord." [Laughs]

TI: Infantry?

HM: Yeah, infantry.

TI: And so what did he think when he saw that?

HM: He says, he says, "Man, you musta rubbed somebody the wrong way," he says to me. I remember his statement. And he says, "Well, well, you're supposed to get down to Fort Ord."

TI: Now where were the orders coming from? That same --

HM: Well this is the AC of SG2.

TI: Okay.

HM: And I thought to myself what the heck is going on, I'm getting assigned infantry? Well I thought to myself, well it's, it's gonna be interesting. You know, I like weapons. So they said you can't bring your car down there. They told me a whole bunch of restrictions. And I said what's going on? I thought I was -- since I'm a reserve type I had some of these other liberties. And then, "Now you're gonna go into infantry training. So get your car back to wherever you're wanna leave it and report back here." I guess it was a Friday afternoon or something and I had to report back. So I, I left the car in Seattle and took the bus back to Fort Lewis. And they got me on the train, and a whole bunch of crazy characters on that train. You know, infantry types, not very intellectually oriented or educationally oriented. Anyway we end up at Fort Ord. And they, they put us in a different replacement company. And I thought, gee this is funny. They should be processing us like anybody else. And it, as it turned out, they, when they assigned us, this one squad that I was assigned to, they had four Nihonjins in there. I thought to myself, well, this is strange. It was one of the beginning mixed company training outfits in Fort Ord. And they told us that before we got assigned to that company.

TI: Because before, at that point they were still segregated?

HM: Yes.

TI: The infantry units?

HM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. they were either whites, or blacks, or at that time they even had Hispanic-oriented groups. But we were the first mixed company for this, this regiment. And they had four Nihonjins in my squad. And I thought what the heck's going on here. And none of the other squads had four Nihonjins in there. And so anyway, these guys are all from California. And one guy happens to be an engineer. They all spoke Nihongo better than I could. And I thought to myself, well, maybe we're going to Korea. And, so anyway, we go through this infantry training for thirteen weeks. And of course the Buddhaheads all kinda bandy around to each other and we try to help each other. And the weekends we all would try to get down to LA for some reason or other. And this guy Kato used to have a restaurant in, down on San -- South San Pedro Street.

TI: That was his family-owned restaurant? Or his restaurant?

HM: He owned it. Yeah.

TI: Okay.

HM: He was the boss. And he was the oldest of us all. And he was twenty-eight years old I think. And most of us were twenty-one, somewhere in that age bracket.

TI: Out of curiosity, if he was twenty-eight, how did he avoid military service during World War II?

HM: Okay, he was a returnee from Japan.

TI: Okay.

HM: He had been in Japan see. And he returned after the war.

TI: So, returnee, so he was a "no-no" boy?

HM: No, no. He was in Japan.

TI: Oh, he was actually caught in Japan --

HM; During the war --

TI: He was -- okay, so he was in Japan during the war and then -- got it, okay.

HM: So they came back to LA and then they started a restaurant, and he owned that. It's Daruma Restaurant that he owned. Anyway, Kato used to be the owner of the restaurant. His Japanese was very good of course. His English was less than his Japanese. And then we had a guy named Hanano and he was one of these guys that left Tule Lake and then went back to Japan. And then he served with the Australian Army Unit as a translator. And they, they got him one of the priorities to get back to the United States. So he hauled the rest of his family back one by one. And no sooner than he, do that, that he got called into the army, the Korean War started, see. But he was regular army see, RA. Then we had this engineer and he was -- he had his degree from the university in Japan. So anyway, it was a funny conglomerate of people here. I thought to myself, well, they all speak Nihongo except me, very well, and they all have had experience in Japan. I'm sure we're going into the, either MI or some other function like that. So we go through these thirteen weeks of training. And Hanano, Kato and myself, we get on some like the mortar teams. And we, we place first place in the whole regiment on mortar. And so our company was -- we, we won quite a few awards. They had some very intelligent people in our company. The next barrack to us, mostly college graduate types. And we got to know some of them. And, in fact I was invited to his family's place in Davis, California. And when we went there, the guy's family was pretty wealthy. And he was a honors student at the University of California, Davis. And I thought to myself you know, they're mixing us up with a whole bunch of other characters. They must be doing something in the selection process. Well, as it turned out we were all geared to go to CIC school, but I didn't know at that time.

TI: And CIC is Counterintelligence?

HM: Yeah, yeah. And so I volunteered for two weeks advance training for infantry. I, I got so hung up on weapons at that point. And they had a group that would be using the new weapons for infantry, like the recoilless rifle, and quad fifty caliber machine guns on a hydraulic mount, you know. And I, I got wind of that and I volunteered for the -- the company commander said to me, "You're crazy. You're inviting infantry assignment." And I said, "Oh, I want to go into this unit." So anyway, right after my training date they, they cut everybody else's orders except mine because I was gonna go into this advanced training. And all these other guys like Hanano and everybody they got Fort Holabird assignment. So I knew --

TI: And this is in Maryland?

HM: Yeah. This is in Baltimore actually. It's in the city limits of Baltimore. And I thought all those guys are going to CIC. So I, I took my two weeks of advanced training and then they get, got me a priority function to be -- I, I had three days in Seattle, and then they flew me to, to Baltimore and I got CIC assignment, also.

TI: While you're talking about these short leaves in Seattle. What would you do in those few days? Would you just be with the family?

HM: Well, I hadn't been in Seattle for so long that I lost contact with all my people. But yeah, that weekend I, I went to a, a picnic at Lincoln Park and I tried to talk to all the people that I was friendly with.

TI: Was this like a kenjinkai picnic?

HM: No, this, this was a Methodist Church picnic. And I knew quite a few people there. In fact I was trying to get connected with a female there but it wasn't too successful. Didn't have enough time anyway. So anyway, they flew me back to Baltimore, and the other guys had already been there for about a week and they said, "Hey, where the hell have you been?" And I said, "Well, I took this advance training." And he says, "Oh, you dumb SOB. You gonna land up in the infantry in Korea." So I said, "Oh, I took my chance." But I had a great deal of fun on that, that two weeks. I had the opportunity to fire a fifty-caliber quad machine gun system with a hydraulic, very high response system with a very good (firepower). We used to try to hit those model airplanes, you know, that were maybe five-feet wingspan. Man we had a hard time knocking them out. But if you hit 'em once, somewhere in the airplane they would just blow up. But you gotta hit them. But we were firing fifty-seven millimeter recoilless rifles, and seventy-five millimeter recoilless rifles and firing advance mortar equipment that they had the rifling in the mortar system and man you can really spot that stuff. I was really into it. I really liked that stuff. And then they had a couple of, at that time they were the advance version of the M-15's but they were the still the, like in the prototype stage. Maybe they made a couple hundred of them and so we were firing those things off at 600 rounds a clip. But I, I really was happy, gung ho, weapons crazy type individual.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.